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Lot Essay
'His figures, teeming with an overgrowth of ornament, are convulsive monuments to victory and disaster' - Robert Melville, quoted in text for the British Pavillion at the XXX Biennale Venice in 1960.
One of the largest works from a small series of unique lost-wax sculptures - considered Paolozzi’s defining contribution to modern sculpture - 9XSR stands as a totem of post-war Britain. It is imbued with echoes of the ancient world yet undeniably rooted in the industrial present. Conceived in 1958, the sculpture synthesises Eduardo Paolozzi's fascination with technology, engineering and assemblage into a powerful vision of modernity. Saturated with the optimism and anxiety that characterised the second half of the twentieth century, the figure embodies the uncertainties and possibilities of a society rebuilding after the Second World War.
Paolozzi famously described himself as a collector, accumulating images, machine parts, magazines and discarded objects that were later transformed through the creative process. In 9XSR, this impulse towards gathering and recombination is translated into sculpture. A self-confessed Surrealist, he creates a figure that resists easy categorisation. Even its title offers no obvious key to interpretation. Reading more like a barcode or engineering designation than a conventional sculpture title, 9XSR reflects an artist whose studio was crowded with technological imagery, industrial detritus and objets trouvés. Such materials informed his understanding of sculpture as an act of assemblage.
Robotic forms emerge as weathered bas-reliefs from planes of bronze suspended between the figure's legs, so that the dense torso appears balanced upon a framework of struts and supports. Near life-size, the limbs appear simultaneously as reimagined classical columns and as weathered flesh stretched over muscle. The apparent delicacy of its construction is belied by the permanence and physical authority of its bronze medium, transforming the scraps of contemporary life into something monumental and enduring.
Having lost his father in the wartime sinking of the Arandora Star, Paolozzi was acutely aware of the dual capacity of technology both to propel modernity and to enact destruction. Scarred with mechanical detail, 9XSR remains deliberately ambiguous, appearing at once as an ancient relic and as a fragment of industrial debris recovered from a bomb-damaged city. Paolozzi approached the machine age with something of an archaeologist's eye, transforming the materials and imagery of contemporary life into forms that seem both excavated and invented. Rather than resolving these contradictions, 9XSR sustains them, inviting the viewer to navigate a series of oppositions: human and machine, ruin and invention, fragility and permanence.
Created at a pivotal moment in Paolozzi’s career, following formative encounters with Giacometti, Arp, Brâncuși, Braque and Léger in post-war Paris, 9XSR was selected for exhibition in the British Pavilion at the 30th Venice Biennale in 1960, one of the most prestigious international platforms available to a British artist. Despite this public recognition, Paolozzi gifted the sculpture to his wife, Freda, that same year, suggesting a particular personal attachment to a work that frames many of the central concerns of his practice.
One of the largest works from a small series of unique lost-wax sculptures - considered Paolozzi’s defining contribution to modern sculpture - 9XSR stands as a totem of post-war Britain. It is imbued with echoes of the ancient world yet undeniably rooted in the industrial present. Conceived in 1958, the sculpture synthesises Eduardo Paolozzi's fascination with technology, engineering and assemblage into a powerful vision of modernity. Saturated with the optimism and anxiety that characterised the second half of the twentieth century, the figure embodies the uncertainties and possibilities of a society rebuilding after the Second World War.
Paolozzi famously described himself as a collector, accumulating images, machine parts, magazines and discarded objects that were later transformed through the creative process. In 9XSR, this impulse towards gathering and recombination is translated into sculpture. A self-confessed Surrealist, he creates a figure that resists easy categorisation. Even its title offers no obvious key to interpretation. Reading more like a barcode or engineering designation than a conventional sculpture title, 9XSR reflects an artist whose studio was crowded with technological imagery, industrial detritus and objets trouvés. Such materials informed his understanding of sculpture as an act of assemblage.
Robotic forms emerge as weathered bas-reliefs from planes of bronze suspended between the figure's legs, so that the dense torso appears balanced upon a framework of struts and supports. Near life-size, the limbs appear simultaneously as reimagined classical columns and as weathered flesh stretched over muscle. The apparent delicacy of its construction is belied by the permanence and physical authority of its bronze medium, transforming the scraps of contemporary life into something monumental and enduring.
Having lost his father in the wartime sinking of the Arandora Star, Paolozzi was acutely aware of the dual capacity of technology both to propel modernity and to enact destruction. Scarred with mechanical detail, 9XSR remains deliberately ambiguous, appearing at once as an ancient relic and as a fragment of industrial debris recovered from a bomb-damaged city. Paolozzi approached the machine age with something of an archaeologist's eye, transforming the materials and imagery of contemporary life into forms that seem both excavated and invented. Rather than resolving these contradictions, 9XSR sustains them, inviting the viewer to navigate a series of oppositions: human and machine, ruin and invention, fragility and permanence.
Created at a pivotal moment in Paolozzi’s career, following formative encounters with Giacometti, Arp, Brâncuși, Braque and Léger in post-war Paris, 9XSR was selected for exhibition in the British Pavilion at the 30th Venice Biennale in 1960, one of the most prestigious international platforms available to a British artist. Despite this public recognition, Paolozzi gifted the sculpture to his wife, Freda, that same year, suggesting a particular personal attachment to a work that frames many of the central concerns of his practice.